It was weird, Frank shifting and slithering the entire time I ate. Ha. The joke was on you people. I was shitting in public, and you didn’t even know. Hope you enjoyed your baby-back ribs. I had my favorite French onion soup at Applebees®. Frank expressed his displeasure by burping, which made my bag fill with noxious air, so bad I’m sure the cooks in the kitchen caught a whiff or two. Whoever said the charcoal bags with an air release hole were better, lied. I smelled like a giant shitty diaper. I gagged.
Then Frank demonstrated his extreme dislike for French Onion soup by projectile vomiting into my pants, having split open the seal of my ileostomy bag. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! I won the diarrhea contest at Applebees® and now I had to make it out of that restaurant without anyone noticing. My purple corduroys were coated on the inside in undigested French Onion soup because, with an ileostomy bag, the way it goes in is pretty much the way it goes out since you have no large colon to digest your food.
“Lisa,” I said.
“What?”
She was enjoying her plate of ribs.
“Get the check, Frank exploded and we have to go home.”
Thankfully, I was wearing a long sweater, but I could feel warm excrement trickling down my right leg as I stood and scurried outside. I smelled like a cow barn. It wasn’t that far a walk to Lisa’s, but by the time we got there, I had warm gushy French Onion shit in my shoe and made squelching noises every time I stepped. My sweater was soaked in my own feces.
When I got into the bathroom, I tried getting out of my shit-soaked clothes without making a mess, but it was impossible. I peeled my corduroys from my body and stared at my shit-smeared stomach and legs with bits of onion stuck to them like alien worms. Clumps of poop sat like cow pies in my pants and coated the bathroom tiles. The bathroom’s aroma was like a five-star outhouse. Tears ran down my face.
I rattled through Lisa’s medicine cabinet and linen closet, spraying anything and everything I could find to mask Frank’s foul odor. None of it worked. I didn’t want her to see me like this. I wanted her to remember the stud I used to be.
Frank wouldn’t stop shitting. I shat on my feet. My own feet! This was a new low in my life. I never knew someone could shit on their own feet. I started howling with laughter, my face red as tears ran down my face.
“Are you okay?” Lisa came into the bathroom. “Oh my god! You’re crapping on your own feet!”
“Who knew, right? Who knew it was possible to shit on your feet?” We roared together.
“Damn, it smells like a turd factory exploded in here. I love you, babe, but I’m going to wait outside while you clean up.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Frank decided to chime in, he spat all over holy hell. I tried to lean over the sink, watching the toxic brown sludge slide down the drain. Some missed and spurted on the bathroom cupboard door. I guessed I’d be cleaning that too.
Scowling, I wrinkled my brow and poked my finger in Frank to plug him up, but he kept gushing chocolate fudge. I pushed my finger deeper inside myself, feeling my intestinal wall squirming around me. The onions in my undigested food looked like pale tapeworms. They squished out around my finger and slid down my arm. I couldn’t plug the shit hole.
“Give up, Alan. You’re never going to get rid of me.”
“Who said that?” I turned around. I was alone in the bathroom.
“Look down, you idiot, where your finger is.”
“You can’t talk!”
“Sure, I can. You just never listen to me. I told you not to order the French Onion soup, but did you listen? Nope, and here we are. What a pickle we’re in, huh? You think I like being with you?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You couldn’t make me if you wanted to.”
“I can, I can too.”
I took my finger out of my stoma, leaning over the sink, so most of my watery crap spilled in there. I pinched Frank between two fingers and closed his hole.
“Say something now you little bitch.”
“I guess you have some balls. Too bad I live in your head, buddy.” Frank laughed.
I looked at myself in the mirror with my fingers smeared in excrement holding onto my pink, turd stained stoma. It writhed beneath my grip.
“You motherfucker, you’re gone for good.” I did what my nurse told me was the one thing I should never do. I put my finger deep inside my body cavity, which on any other day might have been cool because it felt warm and squishy. I wondered, if I kept probing could I reach my other organs? but I focused on getting my fingers around Frank. Good Ole Frank, the cranky motherfucker who couldn’t ever keep his mouth shut.
I grabbed Frank deeper inside me and yanked. White hot spikes overtook me. My body seized. I fell to the floor, unable to control my limbs with Frank still between my fingers. He appeared to be stapled in there pretty good. I moaned, drool running out of my mouth, the pain was horrendous. I crawled to the toilet and puked forever. I figured there wasn’t anything left but blood. Sure enough, the next time I hurled, it was stomach acid mixed with traces of red.
“You okay in there, babe?”
“Yes, I stubbed my toe on the bathtub, I’m fine, I’ll be out in a minute.”
I bit my cheek, drew blood, and prepared myself for another round of lightning pain to course through my body. Again, no success. Pain ravaged my nerves. I staggered to my feet and swiped everything out of the medicine cabinet until I found what I was looking for: A pair of nail clippers.
“Goodbye, Frank.” I lay down on the floor and bit down on the handle of Lisa’s hairbrush knowing this was going to hurt like a fucking bitch. I started clipping away at the flesh around Frank. My theory was, if I could make the hole around Frank larger, I might stand a chance of cutting him off. I cleared tiny curling bits of my own squishy flesh from the nail clippers - pink, slimy, and brown stained. I worked as fast as I could, pain zipping through my stomach like a thousand bee stings.
This took too long and produced little result. Aha! The nail file on the back of the nail clippers. Bingo! I used it to scoop out hunks of flesh, which I neatly placed in the bloody pile beside me. I don’t know why it had to be a neat pile, but I guess when Lisa found me and called the cops, I didn’t want them to think I was an inconsiderate animal.
This method of torture wasn’t producing the desired results fast enough. Lisa would be sure to check on me. While I managed to open the hole in my stomach to maybe a quarter of an inch, I wanted it to be bigger. Didn’t Americans always believe bigger is better? I wasn’t going to let myself down this time. I vomited from the pain and feeling dizzy from the exertion, I swayed like a drunk at a party.
I took Lisa’s razor from the shower. I stared at it as it glared back at me, the light reflecting off its shiny metallic surface. It was wrong to use such an intimate item to finish the job, so I put it back. I scoured my mind for other options. There was the handle on the toilet brush. That might do, if I could force it into my body cavity before I passed out. I gimped over to the brush by the toilet, blood coursing down my shit-streaked leg. I took the brush and jammed it inside my hole. I collapsed in pain, biting my tongue deeper. I’d bitten it at least halfway through. I threw up in my mouth and shat myself.
“You’re never going to get rid of me. No matter how bad you try. I’m still here. You’ll pass out. Lisa will call nine-one-one. The paramedics will show up and get you to the hospital. They’ll fix you up like new and you’ll be back where you started, talking to your Ole Pal Frank.”
“Shut the fuck up, you piece of crap.”
Thankfully, I was still limber from all my years of Aikido and yoga. Limber enough to fold myself into a human pretzel. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. Probably because I didn’t want to go out as a cannibal. But I sank my teeth into my flesh, ripped, and tore, and spat, and repeated, blood trickling down my chin and stomach. I relished the salty, crimson buffet. After a minute, I got my teeth around Frank. He felt like an overcooked lobster.
“You’re really gonna do this to me after all we’ve been through together?”
“Fuck you, Frank.” I grasped him in a firm bite and that’s the last thing I remember before waking in the hospital.
“You’re awake! Oh my god, the doctors said you had an extreme case of food poisoning, which can sometimes make people have terrible hallucinations. On the way over here, you kept mentioning someone named Frank and he was in your head and wouldn’t go away. And you were trying to get rid of him. When I found you in the bathroom there was so much blood. I thought I was going to lose you, but luckily the doctors were able to patch up your ileostomy and you’re going to be fine in a couple weeks. That’s good news, right?” She leaned in to kiss me.
“It’s great news. Right, Alan? Looks like I’m not going anywhere.” Good Ole Frank let out a malicious laugh.